Work at Blizzard by winning 2v2?

[Tullaeniel]

I found this somewhat interesting that Blizzard wants to Draft people from 2v2 Arenas to work as professional gamers. The Class/Gear/Racial variables from a 2v2 environment seems like a poor choice to find the best of the best from.

Curious where everyones opinions lie on this topic.

We're pleased to announce that World of Warcraft will be one of the featured games in this year’s Championship Gaming Series (CGS) World Championship. World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade players on the European and North American realms have the opportunity to secure a spot in the upcoming CGS draft, to be held at BlizzCon. Players who are drafted onto CGS teams will earn $30,000 - $100,000 or more annually in salaries and bonuses as professional gamers.

Ladders

All teams participating in 2-vs.-2 Arena System matches in each battlegroup will automatically be entered in the competition. The initial phase of the tournament will last from June 19 to July 3, and players can check the rankings by visiting the battlegroup ladder pages. The top five 2-vs.-2 teams in each battlegroup will be invited to the next round.

Qualifiers

Following the end of the ladder phase of the tournament on July 3, the five top-ranked teams from each battlegroup will be selected to participate in the qualifiers, as discussed above. Each of these teams will be copied to a private realm in the corresponding region (Europe and North America), where they will compete with the other qualifying teams from that region's battlegroups. The qualifier round will run from July 9 to July 17 and will utilize the same ranking system as the ladders. At the end of the qualifier round, the top 8 teams from Europe and North America will be chosen to participate in the live CGS tournament at BlizzCon and subsequent draft.

BlizzCon Tournament and CGS Draft

The top 16 teams from the qualifiers will be flown to BlizzCon to participate in a two-day tournament to determine the best 2-vs.-2 Arena teams in the world. The top 8 teams from Blizzcon will then be flown to the CGS World Championship in Los Angeles, where they will compete for cash prizes and immediately begin their careers as salaried pro gamers at CGS. They will join 1 of 8 CGS teams following the 2008 Draft and then compete professionally for their teams alongside team members who play a variety of games, including World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade.

Championship Gaming Series (CGS): Championship Gaming Series

BlizzCon: BlizzCon - Home

Battlegroup ladder pages: The Armory

[Goliath]

I already see the headline news. Some kid commits suicide when he loses the final 2vs2 and doesn't get the job.

[Tirinal]

2v2 is retardedly slanted towards team composition relative to your opponent, and the outcome will almost invariably hinge on what sort of matchup system they use to determine qualifiers.

[Maxxius]

That's a pretty big spread in salaries, 30k-100k.

[Blide]

Salary depends on class perhaps?

[Hateyou]

Originally Posted by Blide

Salary depends on class perhaps?

I'm guessing it depends on how worthless the winners are in relation to the job position. I imagine the winners will get $30,000 since they will most likely be totally unqualified for whatever the job entails.

Most likely two 15 year old kids will win and get nothing. Personally I think it's a retarded way to hire people.

[Kodylan]

The salaries are probably based on the results of each tournament, but it sounds like since there are only 8 teams being invited that each team will get paid at least something.

The qualifiers are to find these worthwhile teams, which Blizzard has offered to help them do with the rating system. That said, Blizzard has absolutely nothing to do with paying or drafting these people - CGS is its own entity as a tournament.

[Jooka]

depends on what the job will be. If its something like on espn where kids are playing madden but instead wow for example.

[Ziggurat]

This really doesn't have much to do with Blizzard, and people won't be working for them.

CGS is a tournement body that got a big cash injection by some big names who are trying to push e-sports (microsoft, dell gaming) as well as a few others (directTV, mountain dew and some others). They started their first season already with CS, PGR3, DOA4 and Fifa 2007. They had a live draft at the playboy mansion (wtf?) where well known esports figures acted as General Managers of a team (6 teams, each representing a city; LA, NY, SF, etc) and picked up entire CS teams (counting as 1 draftee), a doa player, fifa player etc.

The only way Blizzard is really involved is that 1) instead of open signups like WSVG, the qualifiers will be Blizzards own in-game ladder and 2) they will provide the test servers where later games will take place (just like WSVG)

This entire thing is basically a bunch of big names throwing money at something that's been poking it's head out into major north american media space for a while. Starcraft is huge in Asia, where SC has it's own TV channels, and players can be found branded on popular snack foods and sport drinks. People see that going on over there and think something like that is possible here too.

Personally, I think it's awful. E-sports has come a long way from M3 in manhattan, to the red annihilation quake tournement and the birth of quakecon. It's all gone commercial in a bad way that's no good for games and no good for gamers.

[Kasonic]

calling this now: Warlock/Healer.

[Wodin]

Marketability would probably be the means by which they determined salary more than anything else. Ziggurat is correct that they're not actually affiliated with Blizzard, though I disagree with him on the e-Sport deal. I think that it's pretty reasonable and quite possibly even a sound investment on the part of some of the companies involved in sponsoring things. God knows I've heard the words "Turtle Beach" about a billion times after this weekend's WSVG tournament.

As someone who focuses primarily on PvE but enjoys both aspects of the game(I'm too old and slow for serious PvP in WoW, at least as a rogue), I think that ultimately the serious focus will lead to a much more balanced PvP game. This weekend, for example, highlighted just how off-the-hook some racial abilities can be when used properly. So that's a net positive.

calling this now: Warlock/Healer.

All depends on how the survivability vs. damage equation plays out with full S2 gear and BT Shadow Resist gear on the Warrior/Paladin. If the Warlock/Disc Priest combo can mana burn the paladin down before the warrior can seriously threaten either of them and push the priest into healing, then yeah, you'll see Warlock/Healer on top. If the warrior can put out enough DPS to force the priest to stop, though, it'll be a different story.

[Ziggurat]

I didn't mean to imply it would be a bad investment for the sponsors. We've already seen a lot of middle ground market space between gamers and hardware vendors. First, Thresh got sponsored by Microsoft which helped them promote their new mouse (the first intellimouse explorer, iirc). Now, you have Fatal1ty working with creative labs, abit and others to create "pro gamer" motherboards, mice, etc. There's obviously a lot a money to be made off the gamer crowd.

When I said it was bad for games, I meant the spirit of games. It's all gone backwards now. Tournements will be supporting games, instead of games supporting tournements. This is already happening. Sierra paid CPL a large sum of money to have their games (which are less-than-pixel-wide blips on the e-sports radar) chosen as the official games of this years CPL world tour. With the amount of money available in "pro gaming" right now (albeit to a small select few), people are going to go where the money is. People will play FEAR Combat on xbox 360 at CPL and World in Conflict (what?), but not because they're fun, but because they'll make money.

[Cybsled]

Not like you could live in Cali with 30k. Fuck real estate over there. Fuck it in the For Sale sign.

[WillzZz]

CPL has been doing this for a long time (pushing gamers towards largely untested games), and has been criticized for it for a long time. Angel Munoz (Founder and Prez) doesn't give two shits about the gamers, he wants to get his sponsors and make them happy. He's repeatedly made poor decisions that either needed to be changed or were carried through despite themselves.

The CPL is a pox on this world, the bane of e-sports, and is an absolute pile of shit compared to ESWC in every way. I've heard WSVG is actually kind of nice, but what's happening is terrible when you look at the gamers competing.

Take a look at the top q4 players who have been quitting recently. Fata1ty went to be the announcer at this CGS or whatever it's called. Stermy quit to play Fifa apparently, socrates quit entirely, and a couple others are competing in WoW. Whatever happened to the best gamers competing together in the best game? Now, this isn't entirely anyone's fault, but one gamer in particular has been dominating Q4 for a long time, so this is the effect. Any new game can come out and absorbed by some startup tournament, and it sucks the talent away from the games which are trying their damnedest to please their audience. The only way America will pave the way for e-sports is to attract the audience. Changing the games all the time and reducing the talent pool from the most established games is not the way to do that.

This all stems from a lack of true competitive games and the resulting instability due to tournament organizers (read: CPL) switching the games as soon as they get a new sponsorship deal to turn a quick buck. Angel has always been blinded by his ambition and greed, and he even believes he's helping esports and progaming.

So yeah, fuck Angel Munoz. Fuck him in the For Sale sign.

[bitch are your retarded?]

Competitive gaming is in a horrible rut right now as it is, there's really nothing to play out there besides CS:S and nothing in the near future with the exception of maybe Starcraft 2 if it doesn't suck, but thats not coming out for anytime this year.

ET:QW is a pub game/battlefield clone so it's out.

Honestly I don't care anymore, I used to enjoy it because it's fun being good and playing against good players, but the whole commercial push by companies like CGS and the way CPL has turned to shit post 1.6 is really discouraging.

it's become almost entirely about selling games now, instead of playing games because they are actually good competitive games. WoW by the way, is not, and never will be. I imagine it's only being put in the spotlight because of how many people play it, thinking it comes with an instant audience